Saturday, September 9, 2017

First Day of School and new tortoises

A day after getting home from the Keys, it was time for school to start! We already met James' teacher a few weeks ago, Ms. Alois. Her class is the only 1st grade classroom not in a portable and right next to his kindergarten classroom last year, so it was a good transition. He was so excited that he got Ms. Alois as a teacher, he said that she was the one he wanted for 1st grade. Last year she won the charter school teacher of the year for the state of Florida, so I was glad he got her too!

When he walked in, he had to find his number on a list of names and put his things in his number cubby.

Then he found his seat and was amazed to discover that he had school supplies inside the desk. It was very exciting! (Last year in kindergarten they had the desks turned around so they didn't use the inside)

He also go his very own crayon and pencil box and doesn't have to share them with the table. Also very exciting!

His favorite thing about his new class is that they have a classroom pet, a lizard named Gus and the kids get to take turns going out into the garden with the teacher to pick lettuce and vegetables for him. James can't wait until it is his turn!

Holding our frizzle chick. She is getting big!

We are trying to hold Casper a few times a day to get him used to us. We estimated that he was only a month or so old when we caught him, based on how long he was.

Rett is excited to start up preschool at home with me again. 

We are almost done with the preschool level curriculum I've been using with him, so I ordered the next level. It is kind of intense, but we have a year to work on it. I'm fairly certain he will be reading before VPK.

One morning when I went out to check on the chickens I discovered this snake in the quail cage! It is a yellow rat snake, but they are also called chicken snakes because they are known for eating small chickens and their eggs. It looks like it came into the cage from a low hanging tree (since there is an electric fence around the bottom of the cage). Once it got in, it killed two quail before eating a third one. Once it ate a quail, its stomach was too fat to get out of the cage, so he was stuck!

I got our snake hook from the house and used it to pull him out of the cage. I couldn't just let him go because anytime he was hungry he would come back and eat more quail. I guess I could have put him in a cage and relocated him far away, but it didn't occur to me at the time. So I killed him with a shovel. Can't be squeamish about these things living in the country!

We planned on buying a few more tortoises at an upcoming reptile show, so we decided to combine Casper and a few tortoises in one big cage, since they have the same food and light requirements. That means the animal corner is expanding!

The night before the reptile show, a turtle and tortoise club had a lecture series you could go to. They were giving away a baby Galapagos tortoise, so we had to go and try to win it! It was really interesting, a veterinarian who actually went on an expedition to the Galapagos talked all about his trip and had slides and everything. We didn't end up winning, but it was fun to try. To actually buy a Galapagos tortoise cost $5000, so getting one for free would have been amazing!

Petting an albino iguana:

We bought two baby tortoises, the first one is a redfoot tortoise that James named Marshall.

The second baby tortoise we bought is a leopard tortoise that James named Rubble:

Rett checking out the babies:

We didn't plan anything fun for the eclipse, it kind of snuck up on us and by then all the places were sold out of the glasses. I was a little worried about buying the wrong kind of glasses or them not being good enough, so I figured watching it on TV would be good enough. Of course, James' school went all out for the eclipse! They borrowed equipment from NASA (since one of the 8th grade science teachers used to be a big deal at NASA) and set up everything in the PE field. All the classes got to come out and take turns looking through glasses and through the different telescopes with special filters. They made sure to emphasize to the kids to not look up at the sun while walking outside (dismissal was towards the end of the eclipse) and James took it very seriously. He walked with his head facing his shoes all the way to the car! 

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